


Erbschaft

by Croeses



Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Genre: Character Study, Codependency, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:20:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25992010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Croeses/pseuds/Croeses
Summary: Sometimes there is no choice.
Relationships: Andy Strucker & Lauren Strucker
Comments: 10
Kudos: 32





	Erbschaft

Andy had already been pacing for more than ten minutes through the small room they shared.

“Stop moving around,” Lauren told him from her place on the bed, not bothering to lift her eyes from the celebrity magazine she was skimming through for at least the tenth time since she had found it fallen behind one of the shelfs. “It’s rather annoying.”

“It’s not like there is anything else to do around here!” Andy said, throwing his hands up. “We can’t even go outside.”

“We can’t afford to be seen.” Lauren threw him a quick glance to make sure the point got across.

Andy sat down on the foot of the bed and rested his forearms on his knees, frowning at the floor. “I know. I’m not a little kid anymore,” he said and Lauren couldn’t help but smile at the note of petulance in his voice. Despite everything that happened those few last months, he would always remain her little brother. “But we can’t hide for the rest of our lives. They aren’t going to stop caring about this one day and let us be.”

The destruction of the Sentinel Services headquarters was considered the greatest mutant terrorist attack on US soil since 7/15. With hundreds of innocent lives lost, the country was united in its desire for justice. The president assured the scared and outraged population everything humanely possible was being done to catch and punish the perpetrators. Not just the remnants of the Sentinel Services, but every governmental agency was on the case. As such, it didn’t take long for somebody to notice the similarities between this recent attack and the ones that took place all over the world in the ‘50s and ‘60s. And, just like Dr. Campbell did before, they made the connection between the von Strucker twins of the past and the fugitive Strucker siblings of today. Nobody looked any deeper and even if they would have, there was almost no link to Reeva and the Inner Circle.

Now their faces were everywhere on TV and on the internet. They would be recognized immediately by almost everybody. Their mother and the rest of the Mutant Underground agreed that they would need to lie low until this whole thing blew over. That’s how their family ended up living almost on top of each other in this small apartment in one of the poorest parts of the city. But Andy was right. It wasn’t going to just disappear.

Lauren sighed and put the magazine away. “I know. And I don’t like it either. But there is nothing we can do.”

Andy turned his head to look at her. “We could be helping Mom,” he offered quietly.

Lauren closed her eyes. Sharing feelings wasn’t easy. His sense of guilt seeped into her own and only served to remind her that the night their father died they were the same as now: left behind while everyone else was fighting for a better world. Dad had died doing what they were supposed to be doing.

 _We should have been there,_ and Lauren didn’t know if it was Andy’s thought or hers.

They couldn’t help their mother though. She was with the others, trying to rebuild the Mutant Underground, helping mutants escape the stricter laws and harsher persecution that followed the destruction of the Sentinel Services headquarters.

They couldn’t help because the other mutants didn’t trust them. Most of them, just like the humans, thought them guilty of the consequences that befell their kind following the attack. ( _They were, weren’t they?_ Lauren couldn’t help but think. _Fenris killed all those people, after all._ ) Some of them accused them directly and no clumsy explanation of mind control could change their mind. Most of them, though, just looked at them with fear and Lauren thought that was even worse than the anger.

After a few days, Lorna told them that it would be better if they stayed behind and Mom agreed.

Lauren said nothing. She just looked Andy in the eye and knew he understood their situation as well as she did. But, between the two of them, he was always the one that found it hard to accept an unjust status quo. Today he wasn’t going to let it go.

“We deserve better, Lauren!” he began fiercely. “We can’t let them drive us into hiding, into living our lives in fear of being found. How can you accept to live like this? When we could do so much more, be so much more?” With his outburst over, he let his gaze drop to the floor and finished quietly, “Together, no one could stand in our way.”

Lauren moved closer to Andy on the bed and made to reach for his hand but remembered herself and stopped. The need to be close to him became stronger every day and she found it harder and harder to resist it. It was edged with the sense of exhilaration that she had never knew before Fenris and had chased ever after. The last time she felt this way, she tried to run to the people she swore she would never join. She sensed the same need in him.

Her first instinct was to shut it down. But didn’t she do the same back in Atlanta? Andy left because she pretended not to understand what he was going through. She almost left because Dad pretended not to understand what she was going through. She won’t make the same mistake again. She won’t lose him again.

“Andy. Andy!” She gripped his arm to make him look at her. The isolation was getting to him and she could feel his desperation and his desire to act. Finally, he turned his head and met her eyes. “I understand. And you know I feel the same. Fenris makes us believe we can do anything we want. The power is too tempting for us to give up easily. We are not like other mutants. We don’t need to run or hide. We could win any fight they bring to us.” The prospect excited her and the desire to take Andy’s hand and just let go was growing stronger. He was watching her steadily, expectantly. Lauren took a deep breath to regain control of herself and continued, “But there is no coming back from it. We would become everything they say about us on the news. We would become like our great-grandparents. Murderers. Monsters. You can’t want that.”

Andy let out a self-deprecating chuckle. “Aren’t we already?”

Lauren let her hand fall off his arm. Mom liked to blame the Frosts for the attack and Lauren would love to agree with her. But the intoxicating feeling of Fenris has been something she’s been missing ever since Atlanta. Destroying that building with all those people inside allowed her to reach the sense of wholeness she has been searching for all those months she’s been separated from Andy. It was fascinating and terrifying, in hindsight, how calculating they were after Fenris took over and they became one. They hadn’t been strong enough ( _yet_ ) to completely obliterate the building. They could have tried to spare some of the people. But no one is supposed to survive Fenris. They had let part of the skeleton stand so they could focus on who was inside. The Frost sisters had only forced them to attack the building. They had been the ones that chose to kill everyone.

“We’ve killed all those people and we enjoyed it,” Andy continued mercilessly. “There is already no coming back, Lauren. There isn’t – there never was – any use in denying who we are.” His voice rose with the strength of his conviction. “Can’t you see? The only way we can use Fenris to its full potential is if we are willing to make sacrifices. This is the path laid before us. They will never see us differently, so we may as well embrace it. If we want to make a change, we can’t afford to hold back.”

After a few moments of silence, Andy broke eye contact and shrugged lightly. “Even if we reject it, how long will that last? You feel it too; Fenris is calling to us. It’s getting more and more difficult to deny.”

Lauren watched him stare at the wall in front of him and remained silent. However much she wanted to rebuff him, he was right. There was nothing she looked forward to as much as she did to using Fenris again. Every fiber of her being was craving the sort of unity she felt when they combined their powers. She would give in sooner or later, she knew. For her peace of mind, she tried to postpone that moment as much as possible. For how long, though?

She turned to look out of the window. “It’s a curse,” Lauren started quietly, lost in thought. “We were given this great power, but it’s not truly ours. We are the ones that belong to it. We can’t escape it because it’s part of us. It runs in our blood and poisons our minds. It grows like a tumor and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Sometimes I wonder if it was the same for Andrea and Andreas. If they fought it too and lost. If it was simply their fate to become monsters. If it is our fate.”

Andy jumped to his feet. Suddenly, he was full of restless energy. Lauren turned to look at him. “We need to learn to control it,” he answered her questioning gaze. “Like in our dreams.”

“It’s different in our dreams,” Lauren dismissed him. They still dreamed together. Every now and then, they would give in to the temptation and use Fenris. Everything was muffled there and combining their powers didn’t mean complete sensory overload. They could stop it because it didn’t feel nearly as good as the real thing.

“Maybe with practice, it will become easier here too. We don’t know if we don’t try.” Sensing her doubt, Andy continued, “I’ve stopped us before. I can do it again.”

He was right. He had been the one that stopped them at the substation, after that mission to destroy the transformers went haywire. She would have killed everyone there to escape the Sentinel Services. Andy had been the responsible one out the two of them. Despite the appearances, maybe he always was. Maybe, deep down, between the two of them, she was the one rotten to the core.

Andy was watching her curiously, having sensed her bout of self-loathing. Fortunately, he didn’t ask anything and just hold out his hand for her to take. “Come on. Let’s give it a try.”

Lauren slowly stood up, never breaking eye contact with him. She had never been more aware of the desire burning in her blood. _Why not?_

She took his hand.


End file.
